Word: nirmala
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...order with only one dissenting vote: her own. But in the fall of 1996, she nearly succumbed to heart disease, and the sisters realized it was time to elect a successor. In March, 123 representative nuns gathered to pray for wisdom and chose a Hindu Brahmin convert named Sister Nirmala, whom one called a compassionate "carbon copy" of their revered leader...
...woman who has taken Teresa's place demurs, saying, "I'm not Mother Teresa; I'm Sister Nirmala. Please don't call me Mother." This 64-year-old, 4-ft. 10-in. nun, who sometimes refers to distances by the number of Rosaries she can pray while traveling them, did not make her Christian conversion until age 17. She was moved to a new faith by the terrible religious carnage that attended the Indian partition in 1947 and by observing Mother Teresa in Calcutta, years later, attending to its refugees. "It was inspiration at first sight," says Nirmala, who became...
...NIRMALA'S A NUN-PAREIL...
Saints don't often retire. But MOTHER TERESA, the woman whom many revere as one, is 86. So, it has fallen on the frail-looking shoulders of SISTER NIRMALA, 70, a high-caste Hindu convert to Catholicism, to take over the Missionaries of Charity. Sister Nirmala joined the order at 23, after witnessing the horrors of the partition of India and Pakistan. "It was inspiration at first sight," she says of Mother Teresa's work. "Here was someone who could bring some compassion and a sense of destiny to the people." Sister Nirmala was elected by 123 sisters...
...seems to have made a personal fortune on the profits, which went mainly into diocesan funds in India. Even the most notorious recruiter, Father Cyriac Puthenpura, who enlisted at least 500 novices himself, seems to have used his profits for a beneficent purpose: to build the Nirmala Bhavan (Home of the Pure of Heart) Secular Institute for girls in Kerala's Ettumannur district. In his zeal, however, Puthenpura may have oversold his audience. His recruits did not, as he claimed, "live like princesses" in Europe. Like novices everywhere, they had to wash dishes, scrub floors, and perform other menial...